Marquette Warrior

We are here to provide an independent, rather skeptical view of events at Marquette University. Comments are enabled on most posts, but extended comments are welcome and can be e-mailed to jmcadams2@juno.com. E-mailed comments will be treated like Letters to the Editor.
This site has no official connection with Marquette University. Indeed, when University officials find out about it, they will doubtless want it shut down.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Can’t Lose With So Much Cheap Labor

Just How Serious Are Obama’s Ties to Weather Underground Terrorist?

Should voters care that Barack Obama is friendly with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, two onetime leaders of the Weather Underground terrorist group that committed dozens of bombings and other violent crimes between 1969 and 1975? That question came up during the recent Democratic debate in Philadelphia, and scorn by the bucketful was heaped on the ABC moderators who asked it.

The Washington Post’s Tom Shales, for example, was appalled that Obama should be confronted with “such tired tripe” as the fact that he “once associated with a nutty bomb-throwing anarchist.” Michael Grunwald of Time derided the “extremely stupid politics” responsible for questions like the one about the “obscure sixties radical” with whom Obama “was allegedly ‘friendly.’” Other commentators were even more outraged.

The chorus of protests echoed Obama’s own defense. When George Stephanopoulos challenged him to explain his relationship with the unrepentant former terrorists -- “I don’t regret setting bombs,” Ayers told The New York Times. “I feel we didn’t do enough” -- the senator dismissed the issue as irrelevant.

“This is a guy,” Obama said, “who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that [my] knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.” His links to the ex-Weathermen he brushed aside as “flimsy,” saying he was sure “the American people are smarter than” to think he shares the terrorists’ radical views.

Obama didn’t leave it there. His campaign issued a 1,300-word “fact check” pooh-poohing his connection to Ayers and Dohrn as “phony,” “tenuous,” “a stretch” -- but simultaneously defending them as “respectable fixtures of the mainstream in Chicago.”

Yet Obama’s ties to Ayers and Dohrn aren’t nearly as trifling as he suggests, and their views -- today, not 40 years ago -- are about as “respectable” and “mainstream” as those of, say, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama’sincendiary minister.

The key facts, reported by Ben Smith in Politico.com, are these: Barack Obama’s political career was launched in Ayers’s and Dohrn’s home, when a group of “influential liberals” gathered in 1995 to meet the young organizer who was Illinois lawmaker Alice Palmer’s chosen successor. In the years that followed, Obama and Ayers would serve together as (paid) board members of the Woods Fund, a leftist Chicago foundation, and appear jointly on academic panels, at least one of which was organized by Michelle Obama. Ayers would even donate money to one of Obama’s political campaigns.

Arguably, none of this would matter if Ayers and Dohrn had long ago repudiated their violent extremism. But they have always refused to apologize for their monstrous behavior. “We weren’t extreme enough in fighting against the war,” Ayers avowed to the Chicago Tribune in 2001. In a memoir published that year, he exulted: “Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon.” America, he said after Sept. 11, “is not a just and fair and decent place. . . . It makes me want to puke.”

In Chicago the other day, radio producer Guy Benson discovered video recordings of Ayers and Dohrn speaking at a reunion of antiwar radicals in November 2007. To live in the United States, Dohrn told the group, is to be “inside the heart of the monster” that is such a “purveyor of violence in the world.” Ayers denounced America as an imperial warmonger steeped in “jingoistic patriotism, unprecedented and unapologetic military expansion, white supremacy . . . attacks on women and girls, violent attacks, growing surveillance in every sphere of our lives, on and on and on.” (Audio clips have been posted at the indispensable PowerLine blog.)

If a Republican candidate had connections this close with a Ku Klux Klan leader, it would fatally taint his candidacy. It’s hard to see why a different standard applies to Obama.

Obama: I Might Put Bush Administration People on Trial for Torture

Obama would ask his AG to “immediately review” potential of crimes in Bush White House

Tonight I had an opportunity to ask Barack Obama a question that is on the minds of many Americans, yet rarely rises to the surface in the great ruckus of the 2008 presidential race -- and that is whether an Obama administration would seek to prosecute officials of a former Bush administration on the revelations that they greenlighted torture, or for other potential crimes that took place in the White House.

Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to “immediately review the information that’s already there” and determine if an inquiry is warranted -- but he also tread carefully on the issue, in line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide. He worried that such a probe could be spun as “a partisan witch hunt.” However, he said that equation changes if there was willful criminality, because “nobody is above the law.”

And further:

The bottom line is that: Obama sent a clear signal that -- unlike impeachment, which he’s ruled out and which now seems a practical impossibility -- he is at the least open to the possibility of investigating potential high crimes in the Bush White House. To many, the information that waterboarding -- which the United States has considered torture and a violation of law in the past -- was openly planned out in the seat of American government is evidence enough to at least start asking some tough questions in January 2009.

It’s nice to say that we want a candidate who will “bring us together.”

But the problem is that Bush haters don’t want to be “brought together.” They want revenge. And Obama, in this case, has chosen to pander to them -- or at least hold out hope that they will have their revenge.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Wisconsin: Ahead of the Curve on School Choice

A press release from the pro-free market Heartland Institute.

(Chicago, Illinois - April 24, 2008) Parents hoping to wrest control of their children’s futures away from education bureaucrats and politicians should consider moving to Wisconsin, a new “report card” from The Heartland Institute suggests. They should avoid Montana or Washington State.

Choice & Education Across the States ranks state efforts to increase accountability and improve student achievement with four kinds of school choice: vouchers, charters, tax credits, and public school choice.

“School choice programs give parents the power to decide where their children are schooled,” notes author Michael Van Winkle. “School choice is accountability. When parents have the power to remove their children from a school that is failing them, without financial penalty, they and their children are better served.”

With 23 being the highest possible score on Van Winkle’s evaluation, the median score was just five points. West Virginia and five other states scored only two points each, while Washington and Montana racked up a mere single point.

Arizona and Florida achieved scores of 15 and 14, respectively--grades of A in Van Winkle’s curved grading system.

The lowest-ranking states offer only public school choice, generally in the form of magnet schools or open enrollment across school districts. Of West Virginia and the other seven lowest-ranking states--Montana, Washington, Alabama, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota--only Oklahoma offers any form of choice other than public school choice. Oklahoma has a charter school program.

“Many states are experimenting with choice as a way to provide a quality public education,” Van Winkle added. “A few states, like Arizona and Florida, are innovating at an impressive pace, willing to try new and better ways to educate children. Other states are not keeping pace and seem committed to preserving the largely choice-free status quo.”

Are the Quakers Going Pagan?

When his partner died in 2004, Kevin-Douglas Olive reached a crossroads in his faith. Even though he had been a Quaker for almost two decades and put his trust in Jesus, he began to explore other ways of tapping into the divine.

“I had this experience of (my partner) after death, and he spoke to me and woke me up out of my sleep,” Olive says. “It freaked me out, because I really didn’t believe in that stuff; . . . my faith in God had disappeared when my partner died.”

He started to explore Wicca, a nature-based pagan religion, surrounding himself with pentacles, candles and incense. But that didn’t stick. “It seemed like more make-believe on top of the Christian make-believe,” he says. “I was rejecting one; I didn’t want to bring in another.”

Even after Olive found his way back to Jesus, he retained some elements of paganism. While he upholds the standard traditions of his local Quaker meeting hall, he privately incorporates pagan ritual into his prayer.

He’s part of a small but growing movement of Quakers who also identify as pagan — a trend that may or may not exist in other Christian traditions, but certainly not in such an organized, public fashion.

Across the board, the number of Quakers is dwindling, to roughly 100,000 in the U.S. But if Quakerism continues to catch on among the estimated half million pagans in the U.S., those who embrace both traditions predict that could reverse the Quakers’ downward trend. Still, some Quakers worry about losing their own traditions through the process of accepting new ones.

In the last decade, this dual faith has sprung up around the country, including Quaker-pagan gatherings, seminars, an extensive presence on the Internet, and even explicitly Quaker-pagan congregations. There may be only several hundred Quaker pagans, but among American Quakers, their presence can be distinctly felt.

“It seems that now, in most liberal meetings at least, you can always find a few members that identify as pagan,” says Stasa Morgan-Appel of Ann Arbor, Mich., who has facilitated a Quaker pagan interest group since 2002.

Quakers — officially the Religious Society of Friends — are divided into four main branches, three of which are explicitly Christian. Pagans have been generally joining the liberal fourth branch, the Friends General Conference, which counts 30,000 members in North America, including Morgan-Appel.

Liberal Quakers are less tied to the Christianity and instead hold established Quaker practices, such as unprogrammed pastor-less meetings, as the basis of their faith. Because of that flexibility, many liberal Quakers no longer see Jesus as divine, and some don’t believe in God at all.

It may seem strange that pagans would join the Quakers, which began in the 1600s with strong anti-pagan sentiment. Founder George Fox even altered the days of the week because of their pagan roots. To this day, Quakers refer to Sunday as First Day, Monday as Second Day and so on.

Witnessing about Jesus in Olive’s meeting has become infrequent. “People here come from so many different places, spiritually,” he says. “Meetings can be very quiet, as many people are afraid to voice views that others might not hold to be true. We talk about God, but we don’t really put a name to him or her.”

Political Science Major to Appear on “Wheel of Fortune”

Marquette University political science major Sabrina Stephenson will compete on the April 30 episode of “Wheel of Fortune,” airing at 6:30 p.m. weeknights on Channel 58. She was part of the game show’s “College Week,” recorded in March at Chicago’s Navy Pier and airing next week.

A fair number of people will want to tune in and root for her.

But wait. It’s already happened.

But since we don’t know how it turned out, we can root for her anyway, right?

[Update]

We have pulled this up to the top as a reminder to everybody who may not have seen it, or who may have seen it and forgotten it.

We won’t reveal the outcome of the show, but let’s just say that people who tune in to root for Sabrina will not be unhappy.

David Horowitz to Speak at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

David Horowitz will speak in the UWM Union’s Wisconsin Room on April 30th at 7:30p.m.

The talk will be on Islamo-Facism.

Horowitz is a high controversial speaker, since he says things that are considered “offensive” (supposedly) to Muslim students. In reality, he talks rather bluntly about the threat of the radical wing of Islam. Just as black race hustlers don’t like the reality of race and crime talked about, a lot of Muslim activists don’t like the unsavory nature of some Islamic movements talked about.

Given the reign of political correctness on college campuses, it’s the grievance mongers who are catered to by the campus bureaucrats. Sensible Muslims (like sensible blacks) get pretty much ignored.

The UWM Conservative Union has an honorable record of bringing controversial speakers to that campus. As the press release points out:

David’s speech will be the conclusion of a series of speeches held at UWM this year by the Conservative Union, which has included conservative author-scholars Walid Shoebat, Peter Schweizer, Dinesh D’Souza, and Bay Buchanan.

Muslims vs. Homosexuals: Comparative Victimology

Two primary schools have withdrawn storybooks about same-sex relationships after objections from Muslim parents.

Up to 90 gathered at the schools to complain about the books which are aimed at pupils as young as five.

One story, titled King & King, is a fairytale about a prince who turns down three princesses before marrying one of their brothers.

Another named And Tango Makes Three features two male penguins who fall in love at a New York zoo.

Bristol City Council said the two schools had been using the books to ensure they complied with gay rights laws which came into force last April.

They were intended to help prevent homophobic bullying, it said.

The “homophobic bullying” business is a very transparent pretext, of course. Students get bullied for all kinds of reasons: because they are fat, because they have glasses, because the are Christians (we’ve known of this happening) and because they are perceived as homosexual.

While an anti-bullying campaign to reduce all bullying sounds like a dandy idea (assuming it actually has any effect), what we have here is a campaign to teach that homosexuality is perfectly normal and healthy, and further than anybody who has any reservations about that is a “homophobe.”

But the council has since removed the books from Easton Primary School and Bannerman Road Community School, both in Bristol.

A book and DVD titled That’s a Family!, which teaches children about different family set-ups including gay or lesbian parents, has also been withdrawn.

The decision was made to enable the schools to “operate safely” after parents voiced their concerns at meetings.

Members of the Bristol Muslim Cultural Society said parents were upset at the lack of consultation over the use of the materials.

Farooq Siddique, community development officer for the society and a governor at Bannerman Road, said there were also concerns about whether the stories were appropriate for young children.

“The main issue was there was a total lack of consultation with parents,” he said.

“The schools refused to deal with the parents, and were completely authoritarian.

“The agenda was to reduce homophobic bullying and all the parents said they were not against that side of it, but families were saying to us ‘our child is coming home and talking about same-sex relationships, when we haven’t even talked about heterosexual relationships with them yet’.

“They don’t do sex education until Year Six and at least there you have got the option of withdrawing the children.

“But here you don’t have that option apparently. You can’t withdraw because it is no particular lesson they are used in.”

He added: “In Islam homosexual relationships are not acceptable, as they are not in Christianity and many other religions but the main issue is that they didn’t bother to consult with parents.”

The internal logical contradictions of the Left on display. Apparently, when Christians object to books aimed at teaching preschoolers to idolize a sexual malfunction, we are blackhearted villains, but when Muslims object to sodomy, they must be heeded with grave deliberation. I am not sure how the pious totem pole of victimology goes, but apparently multi-culturalism trumps gay tolerance.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Letter to the Editor: Academic Freedom on Campus

From an e-mail correspondent:

Professor McAdams,

First, though I doubt you would remember me, I am a 1990 graduate of Marquette’s Political Science Program. . . . Since then I taught for Milwaukee Public Schools as a Middle School teacher for 6 years, but because I went through Army ROTC while at Marquette I was able to switch professions in 1998 to Active Duty. Sadly, the reason for changing was that the day I stepped out of the classroom and into a uniform I doubled my income (though that is a different topic of conversation). To make a long story short, I have since then taught ROTC at UW-Madison (where I received a Masters Degree in Public Affairs) for three years, and am now the Commander of the UW-Stevens Point ROTC Department.

It is for this reason that I am responding to your blog. Having been a student and an Assistant Professor of Military Science at UW-Madison, I was continually struck by the open hostility to ROTC at Madison. I still remember when Donna Shalala was the Chancellor at Madison and brought the entire faculty together to vote on ROTC remaining on campus, fully knowing that as a land grant institution she was mandated to keep ROTC.

The vote was 63% for shutting the ROTC programs at Madison. When I was teaching there, it was not “healthy?” to wear my uniform across campus because of the response I would receive. Additionally, when we tried to put either letters to the editor or advertising in the Cardinal or other campus papers we were always denied access. Then, I would hear back from the cadets that if they wore the uniform to class, other students would make comments on why anyone would ever want to “learn to kill people for a living?”

It was my experience there that the faculty actively educates the underclassmen on how to think about specific subjects, and though this is not universal across the campus, there is no one who would be able to say that the education is not biased. This fact was a steady topic of conversation among our cadets. It is important to note here that my experience was not based solely on hearsay. I personally had faculty approach me and ask derisively “What are you doing here?”

I would like to compare/contrast this to my experience at Marquette and now at UW-Stevens Point. At Marquette, though there were individual students who would on occasion make negative comments, I always felt that the faculty as a whole was either neutral or supportive to cadets in ROTC. At Stevens Point, I have noted a similar attitude.

The reason I wish to bring out this contrast is that your article seems to point towards a certain universal oppression of free speech at Universities, but I would argue that the most damaging incidents occur by the indoctrination of students while they are still forming their outlook on the world by professors whom they trust at specific institutions.

When ideas from any side are dismissed without real debate or analysis because they originate from a suspect source (the government, the Right, ROTC...) then the development of students analytical capacity is stunted. I know that UW-Madison’s leadership believes that it is a bastion for free thought, and that it teaches personal responsibility for the information one accepts as real, the reality may be very different because they do not really see what is going on in the liberal arts classrooms forming the central curriculum of the University. What I saw was the campus wide results. It would be hard to convince me that these students arrived on campus with a predisposition to hating their Army and towards Officership and military service in it. Those ideas are learned and taught.

My conclusion is simple, oppression of free speech is not universal on campuses around the country, but is often most prominent in those places where people would most like to think they are free. UW-Madison is one example of this.

Thank you for the education that you helped to give me at Marquette, and I will continue to read your blog as a fine source of thought provoking informative editorials.

Respectfully,

Jeffrey KurkaLieutenant Colonel US ArmyProfessor of Military Science UW-Stevens Point

We are delighted to hear from a former student, and entirely agree with his observations.

When we blog about intolerance and censorship in academia nationally, and about cases at Marquette, we don’t mean to imply that Marquette is worse than other institutions. Indeed, since Marquette is more conservative than lots of other universities, it’s also more tolerant and open to diverse points of view.

Of course, there are places on campus where politically correct intolerance prevails, but they are pretty much the places (humanities departments, education, victim studies programs) where intolerance prevails throughout academia generally.

More and More Cases of Censorship on College Campuses

But students and faculty members already are being censored, silenced and punished for having unpopular or offensive views on a regular basis. Here are just a few examples of cases going on right now:

• At Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, a student-employee was found guilty of racial harassment for reading a book. The book, Notre Dame vs. the Klan, was apparently offensive because it has pictures of Klansmen on the cover -- never mind that the book actually celebrated the defeat of the Klan by Notre Dame students in a 1924 riot.

• At Colorado College, students were found guilty of “violence” (pdf) for publishing a satire of a feminist flier (pdf). The joke flier (pdf) celebrated manliness and talked about “chain saw etiquette,” “tough guy wisdom” and the range of a sniper rifle. Dick Celeste, former Ohio governor and Colorado College president, defended the punishment on his blog by citing the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University shootings. The title of my recent blog, “What Can the Virginia Tech Tragedy Do for Me?” tells you what I think about that rationale. The flier was a parody, and everyone knew it. Yet Celeste shamefully invoked national tragedies as an excuse for his mistake.

• At Brandeis University, a professor of 47 years was found guilty of racial harassment for using the word “wetback” in a Latin American politics class in order to explain and decry the epithet. The administration there has arrogantly refused to overturn the finding.

• At Georgia’s Valdosta State University, a student was expelled for a “threatening” collage on Facebook. While the university backed down from that punishment in January, the school maintains a ““free speech zone” that is only available from noon to 1 p.m. and 5 to 6 p.m. -- and only on 48 hours notice.

• At Tufts University, a student publication was found guilty of racial harassment of parodying affirmative action but, far more disturbing, for publishing true -- if uncomplimentary -- facts about radical Islam. Tufts has also refused to overturn the finding.

• At Lake Superior State University, a professor has been ordered to remove conservative cartoons and jokes on his office door despite the fact that professors who have more liberal views are regularly allowed to post what they want on their own doors.

• Meanwhile, 75% of the 346 American colleges the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education surveyed in 2007 maintain speech codes that would not pass constitutional muster. FIRE even runs a “Speech Code of the Month” feature that highlights the worst of them. I have always been a fan of Davidson College’s sexual harassment policy, which prohibits the use of “patronizing remarks” such as “referring to an adult as “girl,” “boy,” “hunk,” “doll,” “honey” or “sweetie” and further prohibits “comments or inquiries about dating.” How, exactly, do people date there? And do people really use the word “hunk” anymore?

If you are reading this, Mr. Stein, I ask you to please take a look at the cases I cited yesterday. Please take a look at the violations against religious students’ rights (including banning “The Passion of the Christ”), the gross violations of due process, the crazy indoctrination of students, and the actual ideological litmus tests at schools as prestigious as Columbia University’s Teachers College. Did you know that most colleges that FIRE surveys maintain oppressive speech codes? Did you know that many colleges maintain tiny and out-of-the-way free speech quarantines called speech zones? We could use some high-profile help here, Ben. With your power and influence you really could help bring a missing dose of liberty back to campuses. But if you only care about ID education, I suspect that you will only be preaching to people who already agree with you.

We think that Lukianoff is letting some of his cultural biases intrude when he berates Stein for only being concerned for the free expression of anti-Darwinist ideas. But on the large point -- the pervasiveness of intolerance and censorship on college campuses -- he’s absolutely on target.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Ronnie Van Zant Is Turning Over In His Grave

Support Diversity in Campus Journalism

We are talking, of course, about The Warrior, an independent newspaper published by Marquette students.

It’s considered conservative -- which is fair -- but typically has a Point/Counterpoint feature with opinion columns on both sides of some campus, state or national issue.

The Warrior has a history of being more willing to support a Catholic perspective than the administration-controlled Tribune. The Warrior was willing to carry an insert opposing abortion that the Tribune turned down.

As Ronald Reagan’s top policy aide in the White House and Attorney General of the United States from 1985-1988, Ed Meese has earned his reputation as an American statesman. Currently chair of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, Meese helped spark renewed attention to originalist jurisprudence as AG. On Thursday, April 17, General Meese will visit Marquette Law School to answer the question, “Would the Founding Fathers Recognize Today’s Supreme Court?”

Monday, April 14, 2008

Two Minorities and the Recipe for Failure

In Bayou country I lived on boats and in doublewide trailers, and like the rest of the Vietnamese refugees, I shopped at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of rice. When they arrived in Louisiana the refugees had no money (the money that they had was used to bribe their way out of Vietnam and into refugee camps in Thailand), few friends, and a mostly unfriendly and suspicious local population.

They did however have strong families, a strong work ethic, and the “Audacity of Hope.” Within a generation, with little or no knowledge of English, the Vietnamese had achieved dominance in the fishing industry there and their children were already achieving the top SAT scores in the state.

While I had been fishing my new black friend had been working as a prison psychologist in Missouri, and he was pursuing a higher degree in psychology. He was interested in my story, and after about an hour getting to know each other I asked him point blank why these Vietnamese refugees, with no money, friends, or knowledge of the language could be, within a generation, so successful. I also asked him why it was so difficult to convince young black men to abandon the streets and take advantage of the same kinds of opportunities that the Vietnamese had recently embraced.

His answer, only a few words, not only floored me but became sort of a razor that has allowed me ever since to slice through all of the rhetoric regarding race relations that Democrats shovel our way during election season:

“We’re owed and they aren’t.”

In short, he concluded, “they’re hungry and we think we’re owed. It’s crushing us, and as long as we think we’re owed we’re going nowhere.”

And then to another job:

After leaving the fishing boats, I attended graduate school at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I managed to get a job on campus teaching expository writing to minority students who had been accepted provisionally into the university on an affirmative action program. And although I never met him, Ward Churchill, in addition to teaching in the ethnic studies department, helped to develop and organize the minority writing program.

The job paid most of my bills, but what I witnessed there was absolutely horrifying. The students were encouraged to write essays attacking the white establishment from every conceivable angle and in addition to defend affirmative action and other government programs. Of the hundreds of papers that I read, there was not one original contribution to the problem of black mobility that strayed from the party line.

The irony of it all however is that the “white establishment” managed to get them into the college and pay their entire tuition. Instead of being encouraged to study international affairs, classical or modern languages, philosophy or art, most of these students became ethnic studies or sociology majors because it allowed them to remain in disciplines whose orientation justified their existence at the university. In short, it became a vicious cycle.

There was a student there I’ll never forget. He was plucked out of the projects in Denver and given a free ride to the university. One day in my office he told me that his mother had said the following to him: “M.J., they owe you this. White people at that university owe you this.” M.J.’s experience at the university was a glorious fulfillment of his mother’s angst.

There were black student organizations and other clubs that “facilitated” the minority student’s experience on the majority white and “racist” campus, in addition to a plethora of faculty members, both white and black, who encouraged the same animus toward the white establishment. While adding to their own bona fides as part of the trendy Left, these “facilitators” supplied M.J. with everything he needed to quench his and his mother’s anger, but nothing in the way of advice about how to succeed in college. No one, in short, had told M.J. that he needed to study. But since he was “owed” everything, why put out any effort on his own?

In a fit of despair after failing most of his classes, M.J. wandered into my office one Friday afternoon in the middle of the semester and asked if I could help him out. I asked M.J. about his plans that evening, and he told me that he usually attended parties on Friday and Saturday nights. I told him that if he agreed to meet me in front of the university library at 6:00pm I would buy him dinner. At 6pm M.J. showed up, and for the next twenty minutes we wandered silently through the stacks, lounges, and study areas of the library. When we arrived back at the entrance I asked M.J. if he noticed anything interesting. As we headed up the hill to a popular burger joint, M.J. turned to me and said:

“They were all Asian. Everyone in there was Asian, and it was Friday night.”

Nothing I could do, say, or show him, however, could match the fire power of his support system favoring anger. I was sad to hear of M.J. dropping out of school the following semester.

One might think that the moral of all of this is that the Asian model should be emulated.

But the politically correct professors don’t see it this way. They deride Asians as the “model minority.”

Barack Obama: Elitist Snob

“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

This, unfortunately, is the way that many (and perhaps most) college professors view people who disagree with their cultural views.

It’s the way most journalists view people who disagree with their cultural views.

It’s just another piece of evidence that Obama is not really a “black” candidate.

He’s just a standard latte liberal who happens to have racially mixed parentage.

He’s not, in other words, really different from John Kerry or Michael Dukakis.

[Postscript]

Note how Obama included “anti-trade sentiment” in his list of evil beliefs. But he’s been running on a protectionist platform! So he is either hypocritically condemning people who agree with him, or he knows better than to favor protectionism and has been pandering mightily.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Liberal Churchmen Support Racist Jeremiah Wright

It has been about a month since Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.’s rant against whites and America jarred our consciousness, but some people still can’t resist using it for their own purposes. We’ve heard just about enough from politicians, commentators and others of all sides who are trying to squeeze every opportunity for self-promotion from the controversy.

Even calls for calm and “sacred conversations” seem to add to racial animosities. The latest came in Wright’s own church, Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side.

There, leaders of the National Council of Churches gathered Thursday to “affirm this denomination and this congregation,” said Rev. Michael Kinnamon, the group’s general secretary.

In other words, affirm a racist pastor and a congregation that tolerated, and in many instances applauded, his hateful rhetoric.

In other words, they are acting like standard liberal clerics.

Further:

Rev. John H. Thomas, national president of the United Church of Christ, said of the sacred conversation about race that the group urged, “That does not mean that our language is always going to be gentle and quiet and graceful, because racism is not gentle and quiet and graceful.” Thomas apparently didn’t catch the irony that Wright’s rant was rough, loud and graceless and could be subject to charges of racism.

So if racism is “rough, loud and graceless” that justifies nasty racial animus, anti-Americanism and outrageous conspiracy theories about how black people have been oppressed.

What would Jesus do?

In the world of these liberal clerics, He would apparently try to mobilize hatred.

Tribune Refuses to Run Anti-Abortion Insert

The official newspaper of Marquette University, The Marquette Tribune, has again refused to run pro-life advertising. Previously, in March of this year, The Marquette Tribune rejected Pro-Life Wisconsin’s educational ads about emergency contraception, on the basis that the words “chemical abortion” were too strong for the publication.

“Pro-Life Wisconsin has been recently working with Human Life Alliance to place educational inserts about abortion in college newspapers,” said Virginia Zignego, communications director for Pro-Life Wisconsin. “It is absolutely crucial to show Marquette students the horror of abortion. Why would the official newspaper at a Catholic college consistently reject pro-life ads? Last time I checked, abortion was not sanctioned by the Catholic Church.”

The 12-page inserts, called Trapped. . . , are a compelling pro-life resource designed to educate people about abortion. The solid pro-life content challenges individuals to re-think their ideas about abortion, premarital sex, and the humanity of the unborn child.

“Human Life Alliance’s pro-life advertising supplement, Trapped . . . was refused by The Marquette Tribune for the following objections: Accurate description of abortion methods, photo depicting an in utero corrective procedure, and an explanation of the birth control/abortion connection,” said Jillian Roemer, distribution coordinator for Human Life Alliance.

The inserts were accepted by Marquette’s independent student newspaper, The Warrior.

“One of our nine Core Values at The Warrior is to cherish Marquette’s Catholic identity, and we are pleased to have this opportunity to do so,” said Katie Wycklendt, business manager at The Warrior.

An explanation of the peper’s decision had recently come from the Tribune.

Myself [sic] and the sales director have fully reviewed the content for the Human Life Alliance’s “Trapped” Supplement. We have no concerns running most of the material (particularly as it is medically cited), however there are a few images/descriptions that, due to the nature of our readership and the policies set forth by our University, would be inappropriate to print. Those materials are:

There are several different options that will still enable us to run the remainder of the content. The first is to somehow remove those images and articles from the insertion and run the remainder as one insertion (price TBD). If those individual articles and pictures cannot be removed from the given pages, if it would be possible to break the insertion down into individual pages, we can run one article per paper over the period of several papers (ex: Week 1, run the first page, Week 2, run the second page) as individual ads rather than a supplement and simply skip over the pages listed above. Once again, the material listed above would not be included.

The options you have provide are not feasible or reasonable. Exactly what University policies are you enacting to censor our material? Our executive director has instructed me to obtain the actual written policy to which you are referring. Please send me a copy via mail or tell me where I can find it online.

In regard to your specific concerns:

P.4 “Abortion Methods” - These are accurate descriptions. The purpose of us running an ad in your paper is tell people the truth about abortion. To not include these descriptions is a complete censorship of our message. We are trying to encourage people to choose options other than abortion, and we are willing to pay you advertising fees to do this. I cannot believe that any paying customer would submit to censorship.

Picture of doctor performing in-utero procedure - I am not sure why you oppose that picture. That is not an abortion picture. The boy whose hand is seen grasping the finger of the doctor is alive today. His name is Samuel and he needed a spina bifida corrective procedure at 21 weeks in utero.

P.10 “What about Birth Control?” We state that hormonal contraceptives have the capability to cause an abortion. This is true and is cited on page ten. The pharmaceutical companies do not hide this information. What is your concern in regard to this article?

I ask that you reconsider accepting our advertising supplement as an insert in the Tribune. Our information is cited and accurate.

We look forward to working with you in placing our “Trapped. . .” insert in your paper in its entirety.

So it seems that secular state universities were more willing to print the ad than Marquette.

The same appears to be true of this insert. A spokeswoman from Pro-Life Wisconsin told us that other papers are going to accept the insert, but declined to name the papers, saying that doing so could lead to censorship attempts on those campuses.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

That there is a racial double standard in academia is not news, so when a student who is a police intern defends cops against charges that they are racist, what would we expect to happen?

Exactly what happened last Thursday in Marquette’s Philosophy 151 (“History and Philosophy of Crime and Punishment”) class: the professor (one Nancy Snow) “suggested” that he apologize. Coming from an authority figure who has the power to determine your grade, such a “suggestion” is more than just a casual piece of advice.

The whole exchange got started with a class discussion of supposed “over criminalization,” the notion that government outlaws too many things, resulting in a lack of respect for the law. It then moved to a discussion of how police supposedly abuse their powers, using traffic laws as a “pretext” to stop drivers in order to, for example, search for drugs.

At this point the student, Greg Karge, chimed in to point out that police often bear the brunt of this disrespect for the law, mentioning an incident he had seen. An Hispanic who was pulled over proceeded to abuse the cops, calling them “racist.”

In spite of the fact that race was explicitly part of the context of the discussion, Snow objected to the mention of the driver’s ethnicity trying to, according to Karge, “stop me in the middle of my comment, trying to give me a wave” and then saying “why did you bring that up?” Another student remembers Snow saying “Greg, this is offensive, we have a diverse group in the room.” Another student said of Snow’s response “it surprised me because I personally didn’t find his response offensive.”

Karge also pointed out that “if you are polite and respectful to cops they are likely to cut you a break,” the implication being that truculent attitudes of many minorities are part of the problem. He also defended using traffic laws to stop people who are suspected of carrying drugs, saying there is “no other way.”

A vigorous discussion ensued. There is, of course, nothing wrong with a vigorous discussion, but a large part of it involved Karge being berated by a handful of liberal students who were “offended.” Two of the blacks in class complained about how they had been stopped because of their race (although they had not been asked to get out of their cars, had not been ticketed and their cars had not been searched). A liberal student told Karge “you have no right to look at something from one side,” a hugely ironic statement, given that the class had been looking at the issue only from the side of aggrieved minorities.

After class Snow took Karge aside and told him that his comments “could have been interpreted as offensive,” mentioning especially offense to black students. She “suggested” to him that he should write an apology to the black students. Instead, he wrote the apology to the entire class. It read as follows:

I would just like to apologize for any of my comments that I said today that may have offended anyone, that was not my intention by any means. I did not articulate my argument the way that I wanted to, but that is no excuse if I did accidentally offend anyone I would like to explain myself [and] deeply apologize.

It is obvious from several accounts of the incident that Karge articulated his position in a perfectly reasonable way, but then caved to pressure from the professor. A student in the class told us “Since Greg wants to be a police officer one day, he’s been working closely with other officers. He was simply relaying these experiences to us in class, and telling us what he saw and heard during these experiences.”

In the wake of this apology, two students from the class e-mailed him to insist that he had nothing for which to apologize. Other students, responding to our e-mails, said they saw nothing offensive in his comments, one saying “I personally didn’t consider the comments offensive. I could possibly see that some might be offended at the example he chose, but the point he was trying to convey is what I was focusing on.” And another: “From my perspective, when Greg was called upon, he was explaining that it is not as though the police officers are the bad guys, but that they are only doing their jobs.”

Thus looking at police/community relations from a “minority” point of view is perfectly alright, but looking at it from a cop’s point of view is not. And saying that minorities often show hostility toward the cops is also out of bounds. As another student in the class put it:

Everything that Greg said could be considered an observation. He mentioned something about how he had tended to see more African Americans and other minorities with a distaste for police officers. This directly correlated to what Husak, the author we are reading, mentioned in his article in terms of the cycle of overcriminalization. For some reason when Husak said it, this statement was not offensive, but when Greg said it the class overreacted a lot.

Chilling Effect?

While Snow’s response was not appropriate, it is obvious that a small handful of liberal students has, in this class at least, been able to stifle discussion. Any politically incorrect comments are met with moans, tapping of pencils and ostentatious disrespect. It is not clear to us that liberal students are in the majority, but there are enough to chill viewpoints they don’t like.

Karge told us that, when the notion of “driving while black” came up in class, “I thought about going against that, but dropped the idea, knowing where it would go.” And further he has “talked to students who have said they don’t raise issues that are controversial, because they know they will be shouted down.”

Another student said the class has a “very liberal air,” and that “anybody who feels otherwise is jumped on immediately.”

Students, for example, are required to read a “fact sheet” from the liberal Death Penalty Information Center which is rife with inaccuracies and slanted data -- for example, the claim that over 120 people have gotten off death row because of evidence of their innocence. In reality, only a minority of people on the list have gotten off because of actual evidence of innocence, as opposed to procedural issues. A clear majority actually committed the murders for which they were sentenced.

Professor Snow failed to respond to two e-mails and one voice mail asking for an interview.

It is important not to overstate this issue, since a fair number of students simply don’t want to get into any controversy, and don’t say things that other students or the professor might disagree with. This is doubtless true of our own classes, and of pretty much any class that debates controversial issues.

But the professor does play a key role. He or she can send the message that differing viewpoints are acceptable – even if they meet with vigorous disagreement – or, on the other hand, that “offensive” views (meaning conservative views) are to be avoided.

Too many professors – especially in the humanities and in education – do the latter. Pressuring a student to apologize for perfectly reasonable comments sends a strong message of politically correct intolerance.

Hugo Chavez Endorses Democrat for U.S. President

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a socialist and fierce U.S. critic, warned on Tuesday that relations with Washington could worsen if Republican candidate John McCain wins this year’s presidential election.

Chavez said he hopes the United States and Venezuela can work better together when his ideological foe, U.S. President George W. Bush, leaves the White House next year, but he said McCain seemed “warlike.”

“Sometimes one says, ‘worse than Bush is impossible,’ but we don’t know,” Chavez told foreign correspondents. “McCain also seems to be a man of war.”

Chavez -- who has called Bush “the devil”, “a donkey” and “Mr Danger” -- accuses the United States of having imperial designs in Latin America and says the White House has plotted his overthrow.

Enough, Already!

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Course on Propaganda in Communications School

Heaven knows there are plenty of courses at Marquette that are propaganda, but we are happy to be able to report what promises to be a dandy course about propaganda.

Titled “Propaganda in War & Revolution,” it is taught by Lawrence Soley in the Communications School. The title actually begins with “Communication 196: Seminar in Communication,” which is a way of saying that this is not a regular course (although such courses are often put in the catalog at a later time). So, depending on a lot of exigencies, this coming Fall Semester might be your only time to take it.

For quite a lot of students, this should be a very attractive opportunity.

Traditional Eurocentric physics must be excised if students are to achieve higher consciousness. The restrictive ideology of Newton, with its emphasis on action and reaction, is exposed as reactionary propaganda, used for centuries to oppress indigenous peoples and institutionalize fear and hate. The prohibitive, traditional “laws” of physics must be rejected in favor of new models that foster tolerance, empowerment, and social justice. Under the old order, radical conservative forces have imposed “conservative” laws restricting the use of energy, mass, momentum, and electrical charge. Rather than conserving such forces and powers, they must be increased and made available to all people, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. Students are instructed in the revolutionary New Physics and are encouraged to promote awareness through demonstrations and other media events.

P287 - Feminist Cosmology

The Big Bang Model is exposed a purely male paradigm, deliberately replete with male sexual symbolism in order to deny empowerment to women. A more progressive feminine cosmology, the Gentle Nurturing, is offered to replaced the male Big Bang theory. The Gentle Nurturing model views the origin of the universe as lengthy period of gradual gestation, followed by steady nurturing, rather than a sudden eruption. The male originators of the Big Bang theory are examined critically for their role in maintaining an oppressive order through the manipulation of physics. The new paradigm shows that we are part of an interconnected cosmic entity which must be further nurtured and protected from the harms inflicted by the radical right.

The others are good for a chuckle too.

But one has to wonder, are these any worse than courses found in real world college catalogues? Unfortunately, no.

Monday, April 07, 2008

Obama’s Church: Where the “Theology” Comes From

Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, became a household name last month when ABC News reported on some of Wright’s inflammatory sermons. As his applauding congregation cheered him on, the former leader of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ condemned the U.S. government for “killing innocent people” and for treating American citizens, especially blacks, as “less than human.” “God Damn America,” Rev. Wright preached.

These sentiments were entirely consistent with comments Wright had made many times during his long pastoral career. From the pulpit, Rev. Wright also has taught that AIDS was concocted by the federal government as a genocidal plot against blacks. On another occasion, he declared, “Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run! ... We [Americans] believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”

Millions of Americans were shocked to hear such vituperative rage and unrestrained anti-American hatred. They need not have been surprised. Rev. Wright’s passionate disdain for his country, and his belief that black Americans are still singled out for persecution, is entirely in keeping with the political philosophy that underpins his religious views: Black Liberation Theology.

In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama’s pastor in a heated interview about his Church’s teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to “Black Liberation Theology,” and to the name of one of its leading mouthpieces, James Cone, a professor at New York’s Union Theological Seminary and an iconic figure venerated by Rev. Wright.

Until ABC News picked up the story months later, Black Liberation Theology remained a rather obscure discipline, confined to the syllabi of liberal seminaries.

And what are those beliefs? Like the pro-communist liberation theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of “salvation” in the afterlife is superseded by “liberation” on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.

The leading theorist of Black Liberation Theology is James Cone. Overtly racist, Cone’s writings posit a black Jesus who leads African-Americans as the “chosen people.” In Cone’s cosmology, whites are “the devil,” and “all white men are responsible for white oppression.” Cone makes this point without ambiguity: “This country was founded for whites and everything that has happened in it has emerged from the white perspective,” Cone has written. “What we need is the destruction of whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world.”

If whiteness stands for all that is evil, blackness symbolizes all that is good. “Black theology,” says Cone, “refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.” Small wonder that some critics have condemned black liberation theology as “racist idolatry” and “Afro-Nazism.”

Furthermore, according to Cone, “black values” are superior to American values. Sure enough, the “About Us” statement on Trinity’s web page includes the following Cone-inspired declaration: “We are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.”

It is troubling that Barack Obama’s closest friends and allies subscribe to an explicitly racist doctrine. Even more worrying is that the main exponent of Black Liberation Theology sees Obama as a kindred spirit. In the wake of the controversy surrounding Obama’s pastor and Church, Cone said: “I’ve read both of Barack Obama’s books, and I heard the speech [on race]. I don’t see anything in the books or in the speech that contradicts black liberation theology.”

Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, became a household name last month when ABC News reported on some of Wright’s inflammatory sermons. As his applauding congregation cheered him on, the former leader of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ condemned the U.S. government for “killing innocent people” and for treating American citizens, especially blacks, as “less than human.” “God Damn America,” Rev. Wright preached.

These sentiments were entirely consistent with comments Wright had made many times during his long pastoral career. From the pulpit, Rev. Wright also has taught that AIDS was concocted by the federal government as a genocidal plot against blacks. On another occasion, he declared, “Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run! ... We [Americans] believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”

Millions of Americans were shocked to hear such vituperative rage and unrestrained anti-American hatred. They need not have been surprised. Rev. Wright’s passionate disdain for his country, and his belief that black Americans are still singled out for persecution, is entirely in keeping with the political philosophy that underpins his religious views: Black Liberation Theology.

In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama’s pastor in a heated interview about his Church’s teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to “Black Liberation Theology,” and to the name of one of its leading mouthpieces, James Cone, a professor at New York’s Union Theological Seminary and an iconic figure venerated by Rev. Wright.

Until ABC News picked up the story months later, Black Liberation Theology remained a rather obscure discipline, confined to the syllabi of liberal seminaries. . . . The beliefs held by a presidential candidate’s longtime pastor and spiritual advisor are . . . of great national interest.

And what are those beliefs? Like the pro-communist liberation theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of “salvation” in the afterlife is superseded by “liberation” on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.

The leading theorist of Black Liberation Theology is James Cone. Overtly racist, Cone’s writings posit a black Jesus who leads African-Americans as the “chosen people.” In Cone’s cosmology, whites are “the devil,” and “all white men are responsible for white oppression.” Cone makes this point without ambiguity: “This country was founded for whites and everything that has happened in it has emerged from the white perspective,” Cone has written. “What we need is the destruction of whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world.”

If whiteness stands for all that is evil, blackness symbolizes all that is good. “Black theology,” says Cone, “refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.” Small wonder that some critics have condemned black liberation theology as “racist idolatry” and “Afro-Nazism.”

Furthermore, according to Cone, “black values” are superior to American values. Sure enough, the “About Us” statement on Trinity’s web page includes the following Cone-inspired declaration: “We are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.”

It is troubling that Barack Obama’s closest friends and allies subscribe to an explicitly racist doctrine. Even more worrying is that the main exponent of Black Liberation Theology sees Obama as a kindred spirit. In the wake of the controversy surrounding Obama’s pastor and Church, Cone said: “I’ve read both of Barack Obama’s books, and I heard the speech [on race]. I don’t see anything in the books or in the speech that contradicts black liberation theology.”

It’s tempting to see figures like Cone and Wright as fringe actors with no constituency in the wider black community. [Yet] at a summit of black pastors held shortly after the recent controversy broke, many defended Wright’s sermons as part of the “prophetic preaching” tradition embodied by the assassinated civil rights leader.

Black Liberation Theology, in short, cannot be dismissed as a minority view. Americans are thus left with the troubling knowledge that millions of their fellow citizens consider them to be “devils,” having been taught to think this way by their religious leaders. They must wonder, too, why they should entrust the presidency to a man who has surrounded himself with those who actively despise the very country he seeks to lead.

Saturday, April 05, 2008

Two More Robberies at Marquette

Actually, one robbery and one attempted robbery.

From an e-mail send to the entire Marquette community:

Marquette University Public Safety Alert

April 5, 2008

Two separate robberies were reported to the Department of Public Safety around 2:40 a.m. on Saturday, April 5. The first robbery occurred within the 700 block of North 18th Street at approximately 2:29 a.m. on Saturday, April 5. The second robbery occurred within the 1700 block of West Kilbourn Avenue at approximately 2:35 a.m. on Saturday, April 5. In both incidents, which are believed to be related, one male suspect approached the victims, including two Marquette students and one person not affiliated with Marquette, and demanded personal property. No weapon was displayed. During the first incident, the suspect implied he had a weapon by placing his hand in his pocket and demanded personal property. The victims refused to hand over their property and the suspect fled the area. During the second incident, the suspect grabbed the victim’s shoulder demanding personal property, the victim threw the property and the suspect fled the area with it. None of the victims was physically injured. The Department of Public Safety and the Milwaukee Police Department immediately responded to both incidents. Victim services have been offered to those involved.

They also show that Marquette has a very strong interest in reducing crime in the city of Milwaukee.

Unfortunately, the approaches that are likely to do that (increased incarceration, aggressive policing) are politically incorrect. Thus Marquette will continue to be at best irrelevant, and at worst part of the problem.

The writing is of generally high quality. Some essays do suffer from an uncritical “gee whiz, all these policies are just great” naïveté. But on the other hand, there is a balanced (or even somewhat critical) treatment of ethanol.

The page began as an adjunct to Prof. McGee Young’s course on Environmental Politics. Last year, Young got a few students involved on a trial basis. This year, he extended the project to involve the entire class.

Being a “wiki” hosted by Wetpaint.com, anybody can sign up to be a member. And any member can post, or edit the posts of other members. In a few notorious cases on Wikipedia, this capability has been used maliciously, or irresponsibly to post nonsensical “information.” In fact, that has not happened on this site, and is unlikely to, although Young has moderator privileges and can lock out anybody who causes problems.

Young has assigned students in his class to various roles in the project. First, each student reads three online newspapers from various Wisconsin towns or cities, and posts on environmental issues in those places. This accounts for the impressive depth of information on local issues.

Secondly, each student is assigned to one of five groups: events, elected officials, organizations, institutions or issues. Students post on each of these.

Beyond requiring participation as a class requirement, Young is making a point of avoiding excessive involvement with the site, wanting it to be a bona fide student project.

Daily page “hits” on the site are “not breaking 100 yet” according to Young. But attempts to promote the site are recent, a press release having gone out only this week. Likely, visibility will build slowly but steadily.

The wiki software allows anyone to sign up and post, and in the best of all possible worlds the site would “take off” with members posting from all over the state. But at a minimum, this is a most successful student project.

Barack Obama: Huge Racial Chip on His Shoulder

Nearly every page -- save the ones dedicated to cataloguing the mundane details of his life -- is bristling with anger at some imputed racist incident. The last time I heard this much race-baiting invective I was . . . in my usual front-row pew, as I am every Sunday morning, at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Obama tells a story about taking two white friends from the high school basketball team to a “black party.” Despite their deep-seated, unconscious hatred of blacks, the friends readily accepted. At the party, they managed not to scream the N-word, but instead “made some small talk, took a couple of the girls out on the dance floor.”

But with his racial hair-trigger, Obama sensed the whites were not comfortable because “they kept smiling a lot.” And then, in an incident reminiscent of the darkest days of the Jim Crow South . . . they asked to leave after spending only about an hour at the party! It was practically an etiquette lynching!

So either they hated black people with the hot, hot hate of a thousand suns, or they were athletes who had come to a party late, after a Saturday night basketball game.

In the car on the way home, one of the friends empathizes with Obama, saying: “You know, man, that really taught me something. I mean, I can see how it must be tough for you and Ray sometimes, at school parties . . . being the only black guys and all.”

And thus Obama felt the cruel lash of racism! He actually writes that his response to his friend’s perfectly lovely remark was: “A part of me wanted to punch him right there.”

Wanting to punch his white friend in the stomach was the introductory anecdote to a full-page psychotic rant about living by “the white man’s rules.” (One rule he missed was: “Never punch out your empathetic white friend after dragging him to a crappy all-black party.”)

Obama’s gaseous disquisition on the “white man’s rules” leads to this charming crescendo: “Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger.”

For those of you in the “When is Obama gonna play the ‘N-word’ card?” pool, the winner is . . . Page 85! Congratulations!

When his mother expresses concern about Obama’s high school friend being busted for drugs, Obama says he patted his mother’s hand and told her not to worry.

This, too, prompted Obama to share with his readers a life lesson on how to handle white people: “It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved -- such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time.”

First of all, I note that this technique seems to be the basis of Obama’s entire presidential campaign. But moreover -- he was talking about his own mother! As Obama says: “Any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning.” Say, do you think a white person who said that about blacks would be a leading presidential candidate?

The man is stark bonkersville.

He says the reason black people keep to themselves is that it’s “easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you.”

Here’s a little inside scoop about white people: We’re not thinking about you. Especially WASPs. We think everybody is inferior, and we are perfectly charming about it.

In college, Obama explains to a girl why he was reading Joseph Conrad’s 1902 classic, “Heart of Darkness”: “I read the book to help me understand just what it is that makes white people so afraid. Their demons. The way ideas get twisted around. I helps me understand how people learn to hate.”

By contrast, Malcolm X’s autobiography “spoke” to Obama. One line in particular “stayed with me,” he says. “He spoke of a wish he’d once had, the wish that the white blood that ran through him, there by an act of violence, might somehow be expunged.”

We have not, in fact, read the book, and anybody who has is welcome to post -- as comments to this post -- passages that show that he has gotten beyond this sort of racial obsession.

Of course, politically correct white liberals and leftists will say that all this shows that Obama has been a victim of white racism.

But it’s really less about Obama being victimized (he had a very privileged upbringing) than his buying into the culture of black aggrievement.

We’ll consider voting for a black person for president when we get one who has not bought into that culture. Such a candidate may come along soon, but the person is more likely to be a Republican than a Democrat.

Ted Turner: Iraqi Terrorists “Patriots”

Interviewed Tuesday for Charlie Rose’s PBS show, CNN founder Ted Turner argued that inaction on global warming “will be catastrophic” and those who don’t die “will be cannibals.” He also applied moral equivalence in describing Iraqi insurgents as “patriots” who simply “don’t like us because we’ve invaded their country” and so “if the Iraqis were in Washington, D.C., we’d be doing the same thing.” On not taking drastic action to correct global warming:

Not doing it will be catastrophic. We’ll be eight degrees hottest in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.

Turner ridiculed the need for a big U.S. military, insisting “China just wants to sell us shoes. They’re not building landing craft to attack the United States,” and “even with our $500 billion military budget, we can’t win in Iraq. We’re being beaten by insurgents who don’t even have any tanks.” After Rose pointed out the Iraqi insurgents “have a lot of roadside bombs that kill a lot of Americans” and wondered “where do you think they come from?”, Turner answered:

I think that they’re patriots and that they don’t like us because we’ve invaded their country and occupied it. I think if the Iraqis were in Washington, D.C., we’d be doing the same thing: we’d be bombing them too. Nobody wants to be invaded.

As for the fact that we are “occupying” Iraq: we occupied Germany at the end of World War II. Had there been a Nazi “insurgency” would any Americans have described the insurgents as “patriots?”

One could argue, of course, that Turner’s opinions don’t matter much anymore. But if he had made pro-Nazi statements or racist statements, the media feeding frenzy would last a week.

Instead, these kinds of comments from a rich leftist are just a big ho-hum.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

It’s Gableman!

The Journal-Sentinel hasn’t called it yet, but it’s clear that Gableman has won the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

Looking at country by county returns, a couple of smaller counties (Buffalo and Lafayette) that lean liberal are out, but Waukesha, which leans strongly Republican also has more than half its votes out. It’s the 500 pound gorilla where votes still out are concerned.

Butler has no chance of making up the (at this moment) 12,000 vote deficit.

Letter to the Editor: Mary Robinson

We recently blogged about a speaker who was on campus earlier tonight, one Mary Robinson.

Our post drew a comment from a Political Science colleague that we have decided to treat as a “Letter to the Editor” giving it more visibility that it would have hidden as a comment.

John,

While I don’t completely agree with all your points here I want to raise one issue of political science. The Irish presidency is a non-executive position and as such is generally understood to be ceremonial. In this regard I think that Rubin is being rather unfair in suggesting that Robinson is responsible for EU aid to Palestinians. While it is entirely conceivable (even, perhaps, likely) that she agreed with the general EU policy, given the structure of Irish politics she would have had no say over this issue. It would have been decided by the Prime Minister (Albert Reynolds and/or John Bruton.) Indeed, when Ireland holds the Presidency of the EU, the prime minister or deputy prime minister fulfills the role of President (it was deputy Prime Minister Dick Spring who did this during the period Rubin discusses).

Mark Armstrong

We thank Armstrong for the informative comment, although we have to note that the standard sources (read: blurbs on the Internet) give her credit for radically increasing the importance of what has always been a ceremonial office.

We will defer to Armstrong’s knowledge of Irish politics, but note that he seems to be suggesting that her actual position and power didn’t live up to the hype.

We also note that most of Rubin’s article dealt with her tenure at the United Nations.

But let’s go ahead and answer the question we asked in the title of our post: is this “Human Rights Speaker a Supporter of Terrorism?”

Our answer is: no not directly. But she’s one of the left-leaning apologists for and enablers of terrorism. She takes a conciliatory view toward Hamas. She attacks George Bush when he compares Osama to Hitler. (We wonder if she would attack somebody who compares Bush to Hitler.)

The fact that she parades under the banner “human rights” shows that phrase is often a very partisan one, merely reflecting the ideology of the “human rights advocate.” Do Israelis have a “human right” to live in peace? She doesn’t seem to think so. Do the unborn have a right to life? She doesn’t think so.

She is not, in other words, a disinterested above-the-fray activist for “human rights.” She is merely a political activist.